Lenbachhaus, home to the municipal art collection of Munich, is, like many museums, two or three in one. The original nineteenth-century orangish-yellow building is behind the Norman Foster extension opened in 2013. Across the street, underground and part of the Königsplatz U-Bahn station, is the other part, the Kunstbau, designed by Uwe Kiessler and opened in 1994. The Kunstbau is a long hall of a space, poured concrete and high ceilings, well-lit but shadowy, with a sort of crow’s-nest box in the middle, overhanging but self-contained. Today, it was empty save for a woman resting on the many pillows scattered over the floor. A sort of chill-out room.

I was there to see an exhibition of surrealist works – Aber hier leben? Nein Danke. Surrealismus + Antifaschismus [But live here? No thanks. Surrealism + Antifascism]. The entry was dark and easily missed. Down an escalator from the street, you could see the space through an underground window and still not quite find the doors at the base, around a corner. From there, a long hall with security officers and a cashier, who scanned tickets purchased across the street in the main building. Then another descent along a ramp to lockers opposite a large poster-sized text about the exhibition (in German and English).

2024 is the hundredth anniversary of André Breton’s first manifesto. There hasn’t been a lot about that in the UK press. But then surrealism was always exotic in English-speaking countries. And in German-speaking ones. It was something more for Paris-based expatriates than nationals in both cases. One of the wall texts ...